S.D. Trails Houston as GOP Convention Site

Although the field of contenders has been narrowed to San Diego and Houston, the Texas city is now the odds-on favorite to host the 1992 GOP Convention, a ranking member of the Republican National Committee said Thursday.

Ernest Angelo, head of the RNC in Texas, said Houston “has been the favorite from the start,” because of President Bush’s ties to the city and because a political convention has never been held in what is now the nation’s fourth-largest city.

Although still in the running, San Diego is handicapped, Angelo and other GOP officials said Thursday, because of technical problems presented in the “two-site concept,” meaning the San Diego Convention Center and San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium.

Jeanie Austin, co-chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, said from Washington that no GOP convention has ever been staged by shuttling between two sites, which creates “a doubling-up of phone lines, lighting and security.

“This doesn’t mean San Diego is ruled out,” she said. “It just means we’ve never done such a thing before.”

Austin said “no city is out of the running,” meaning the field still includes Cleveland, St. Petersburg, Fla., and New Orleans, as well as Houston and San Diego. But Angelo said he had heard from “good sources” that, indeed, the choice has been narrowed to Houston and San Diego.

Austin said the eight-member Site Selection Committee will meet Nov. 30 in Washington to narrow the field to two, with the 166-member bloc of the RNC voting in the winner Jan. 25.

Austin said the people of San Diego “have been wonderful--they expressed a real ‘we want you’ attitude and made us feel really welcome--but there are concerns about the big columns in the Convention Center that block television and spectator views.

“Some people also expressed concern that the President might be making his acceptance speech while squinting into the sun at the stadium. It’s not that we couldn’t overcome these things. . . . It’s just that we’d have to think about them, and we’ve never had to think about such things before.”

Austin said the Site Selection Committee is composed of two people from each of four regions of the country. Tom Wiesner, a national committeeman from Nevada, and Barbara Campbell, the Republican committee’s state chairwoman in Montana, are lobbying aggressively for San Diego, Austin said.

Angelo said California is “a critical state,” and Sen. Pete Wilson’s gubernatorial victory improved San Diego’s chances.